BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Jefferson County today voted to accept a $3.4 million payment from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and release the New York based investment bank from claims related to wrongdoing.

Commissioner George Bowman voted against the deal saying the bank was getting off easy.

Bowman said he was not for "appeasing" JPMorgan.

"They are the ones that started this in the first place," Bowman said. "How much money have they taken out of here?"

Commission President David Carrington and Commissioners Sandra Little Brown, Jimmie Stephens and Joe Knight voted for the deal.

Carrington said the matter was related solely to anti-trust conduct and not the county's other claims against the banking giant.

"The net result was, 'Do you want $3.4 million or not want $3.4 million'?" Carrington said.

Here's what happened during a finance committee and regular commission meeting today:

Commissioners were told that JPMorgan reached a settlement with 26 state attorneys general in connection with an investigation of allegations of anti-trust conduct, essentially bid rigging and price fixing in the municipal bond market.

The bank agreed to establish a settlement fund of $65.5 million and the 26 state attorneys - including Alabama's -- determined that the county was entitled to $3.4 million from that in exchange for a release of JP Morgan for claims related to that conduct.

"The benefit to the commission is the county will receive $3.4 million that it wouldn't otherwise get," said Dylan Black, a lawyer with Birmingham-based Bradley Arant Boult and Cummings. "The detriment is, in exchange for that (the county) is releasing claims."

The county currently has not sued JPMorgan for antitrust conduct but the release does preserve claims in other cases including matters relating to bankruptcy, Black said.

"On balance the county is giving up certain kinds of claims which it has not to date brought, but it is preserving certain claims it has already brought and it the same time getting $3.4 million," Black said.

Black said there was also a timing issue because the settlement fund was available only through the end of the month.

JPMorgan set up the fund in 2011, but Carrington said the county waited to address the matter because officials wanted to make sure the release didn't affect other cases against the bank.